The COVID 19 virus has brought all nations to examine its self-sufficiency, mainly in agriculture and medical science. These two entities were seen as going hand in hand in our ancient heritage where our Hela Govithena and Hela Wedakama alongside our irrigation efforts, were pillars of our nation and inter-related not just with our well-being but the well-being of the soil, trees and all other living creatures. We had a heritage where we were a robust, healthy nation, producing our food, not with pesticide or weedicide or agro chemical induced fertilizer but using an advanced indigenous knowledge, lost to most of us today. This knowledge connected our forefathers to the earth and the sky, in a way that modern science cannot grasp, but colonized, globalized and brainwashed to think that anything from the West is superior, and anything from our ancient past is inferior, we have allowed the traditional knowledge of the nation to dwindle to a level that it is almost fully lost. The result is that we have come to a point where we barely know who we are as a nation.
The Sunday Observer, begins today a new column that hopes to resurrect our indigenous knowledge in spheres such as farming, medicine and irrigation. Written/compiled by Sri Lanka’s Indigenous Knowledge Promoters, ordinary individuals committed to reviving Lanka’s traditional knowledge, it is hoped that this page will support the start of a new chapter in the country, as we begin to focus on how we can face the economic challenge imposed by COVID 19.
The economic challenge has to be met not with complicated theories but by paying obeisance to the soil of the land; the soil which we have abused with meaningless import and use of pesticide and weedicide, with agri chemical infused fertiliser and thereby wasted our money as a nation. We who centuries ago, during the time of our kings, not only fed the people of the country but also exported our native rice and other produce, today have blindly bought the argument sold to us that we need poisons of various sort to be injected to the soil to have commercial agriculture. We have never considered that such imports do not benefit the health of the people and the dilemma of kidney diseases in Sri Lanka and its link to pesticide/weedicide poisoned water, remains largely un-discussed.
We have a nation immune impaired by multifarious diseases such as diabetes, obesity, cancer. Thousands more are threatened by dengue. We have not focused enough on speaking out about the indigenous medicine feats of our rural wedamahattayas or the Ayurveda doctors of Sri Lanka or how HelaWedakama and Ayurveda focus primarily on disease prevention. We have not had enough public discourse on the native herbs and fruits, leaves and roots that have sustained us for centuries which have enormous immunity boosting properties.
We have not had enough public discourse on how our indigenous rice varieties are threatened by misconceptions ‘sold’ to us by interested parties and how we are destroying some of these ancient rice varieties such as those growing in dry and wetland, out of sheer ignorance.
While we speak much on a cure for the coronavirus, it has to be remembered that the dengue menace that has killed so many, still has no cure in the Western Allopathic system and where recovery of the patient is based on increasing his or her immune system. It is time that we as a nation began focusing on the boosting of the immune system of the future generation by educating them on planting the herbs, vegetables they need and teaching them about the indigenous varieties of these. It is time that every individual learnt to use every drop of rain, every leaf or twig that falls on the ground to help in keeping verdant the soil. It is time we started cultivating our vegetables and herbs even in the smallest patch of land or in pots. Our modern education system has taken us far away from mother earth and it is time we return. Our survival depends on it.
At this point, maybe we should remind our readers that when we focused on well being in our ancient pre-colonial times we focused on the well being of not just ourselves but also on all creatures of this earth; it would have been preposterous if we had suggested to the ancient kings of Lanka that we would one day be importing tons of chemicals based on the myth that we need these for effective agriculture. In our ancient methods of cultivation we accommodated all creatures of the earth and we kept some of the produce for them and had diverse ways, including ‘kemkrama’ to work towards a non harmful method of farming.
Yet today we not only are oblivious to it but ridicule it. The modern education system has done nothing to heighten our insight or wisdom; it has probably done the opposite; made us absorb unthinkingly, unquestioningly information, theories and ideologies cast on us. Gone are the days when we had a rich education system; the Gurukula system where the student learnt not some rhetoric and theories he or she could not connect to real life of the country, but values and skills that could be put to use in the motherland.
Hence in this column we will be bringing you knowledge and insight by Sri Lankans who are committed to keeping our ancient practices pertaining to farming, self sufficiency, well being and our interconnection with the earth, alive.
Let us begin today looking at the appeal for agriculture raised by our first Prime Minister D. S. Senanayake who then too questioned the irony of why we spent money on imports when our own agro produce is devalued and farmers struggle to get a fair price.
The following is what he wrote in his book Agriculture and Patriotism. We quote from the second chapter of the book on Population and Food Supply where the focus is on the heavy food bill of the country at the time during the 1933 economic Depression.
“It is a remarkable fact that we in Ceylon, while repenting in season and out that ours is an essentially agricultural country and that her prosperity is inextricably bound up with her agricultural progress, should yet be content to pay a bill, in a year of depression (1933) of nearly 87 million rupees for the import of our food and drink.”
Speaking at length on how our country then imported foodstuff that grow in this country (rice, onions, chillies..) and imported from California and Australia fresh fruit and imported milk and milk foods he explains further the psychological analysis of it.
Under the sub headline ‘A Psychological Phenomenon,’ PM Senanayake says as follows: “If an attempt is made to analyse the causes of this extraordinary phenomena, it will doubtless be found that they are mainly psychological. It is almost as if that sense of inferiority that is sometimes seen to overwhelm a Ceylonese in the presence of his European brother has also attached itself to his native products.”
Decades later, in the country’s pre COVID19 reality, if anyone who cast a cursory glance at a fruit stall and saw apples and oranges from other countries but struggle to find our panidodang, narang, laulu, lovi, dang and a range of native fruits, will know just how relevant the words of our first Prime Minister is.
Having been locked up for nearly a month we know today that we could live without imported luxuries that we have wasted money on but that we cannot live without the nutrition that springs from our lands. Hence we emphasize that our farmers, the producers of what we consume, are the heroes of our nation, heroes who we have made addicted to pesticide and weedicide and agro chemicals, brainwashing them with the falsity that they need to depend on these poisons and imported seed varieties to make a decent living. The sad fact is if one were to list our many native rice, grains and agriculture varieties that fed our nation from the times of our kings, and our indigenous vegetables and fruits, most of us would not even recognize them and if they do, will not have a clue where to find them, as they are almost fully extinct. However, there are individuals in this country who are working on promoting these native seeds and educating people about them. These are topics we will discuss in the weeks to come as we prepare as a nation to rise up, educate and prepare ourselves in diverse ways for self-sufficiency which the coronavirus has reminded us is essential for each nation.